THE year has just begun, yet it is already shaping up to be an unusual one. Millions of people in Australia, Brazil, China and the US are having a rough January as extreme weather events wreak havoc around the world.

In the absence of natural climatic triggers like an El Niño event, such an accumulation of extremes is highly unusual, says Omar Baddour of the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Until further studies are carried out, it is impossible to rule out that some of the extremes are freak events. But they all coincide with regional increases in extreme weather linked to climate change.

The US, for example, is in the grip of worsening drought. Last week, the US Global Change ...

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